Because It Shows Me the Stars
by theartfulpuppet
Summary: Another sleepless night for Bucky ends up with an unexpected encounter. Some pain, much fluff. No OC romance 2k forever.


He hadn't slept in four nights. With the exception of the few and far between minutes of unwilled surrender during the relentless battle to stay awake.

It seemed the cruel aim of the all-encompassing heat of the sweltering Bucharest summer's night to lull him back to sleep, back into a dark, twisted tunnel of screams and blood and faces. Faces masked, faces frozen in contorted horror. Hands, dragging their murderer down with them...

He jolted upright, slapping himself. He wasn't going to give in. He also wasn't going to win by sitting still in the dark.

He hauled himself to his feet, dragging a blanket with him, and padded unsteadily towards his kitchenette. A tremor ran though his exhausted body, as if issuing a protest to the exertion. He leaned against the sink, and ran some cool water to splash onto his face. His eyes, having been accustomed to the darkness for a few hours now, scanned the countertop, unsure of what they were searching for, and fell upon the square form of the coffee maker. He had rather liked coffee since he'd first tried it, but had come to realize that it brought on unpleasant jitters, which would more often than not send him into a nigh-uncontrollable bout of anxiety. He had decided that the coffee was not worth the trigger added to the already mountainous heap of things that caused him uncalled-for upset through any given day. Right now, he chewed his lip as he turned over choices in his mind: risk the caffeine-induced panic, or allow sleep to capture him into the nightmare hovering just beneath his subconscious.

He was relieved of decision as a new distraction presented itself: he unlocked the side door to his small balcony and cautiously let a hot breeze push it open. A few stars cut brilliantly through the night sky despite the city's light pollution. He breathed in deeply, and stepped out, immediately wary of phantom unfriendly eyes watching him.

 _Relax, it's 1:00 in the morning. No one else is up._ The instinctive fear was momentarily superseded by a distantly familiar feeling. Was it jealousy?

Still, he deemed it best to stay out of sight, and he lowered himself into a cross-legged position in the doorway, wrapping himself in his blanket, regulating the comforting warmth which he now preferred a hundredfold over cold of any sort. He felt his head and senses clear a bit. The air was refreshing, if heavy: however doing little to prevent his eyes from drifting closed. He forced himself to focus on the faintly twinkling stars. He supposed a lot of things from his past: from before he became The Soldier, or even a soldier, and often remembered things he had long forgotten he had loved. One of those things was that he supposed he, the person he was years before, had loved the stars. He even thought he remembered books on astronomy facts and books on fantastical, futuristic tales of space travel and aliens. He must have loved all that. Because he was absolutely sure that he loved the stars now. And that he had loved the stars whenever he had been sent out alone on missions around the world. Whatever new part of the century he would disorientedly wake up in and get dumped into, whatever confusing new sounds were to be heard or loud new sights to be taken in, or whatever segments of an era were missing from the last time he was awake, the stars remained. He knew them, knew each one's placement depending on which part of the world he was in, had memorized them time and time again by just gazing at the patterns they dusted across the sky. Whatever his captors and handlers may have forcibly scrubbed away from his mind and soul, they hadn't ever been able to take away his love of the stars.

He was lurched abruptly from his reverie, but both the fatigue and the dark thoughts had been held at bay for more than a few minutes. Had he fallen asleep? He felt an absence of the cold fear that usually gripped him upon such awakenings. No, it had been a noise. A noise, followed by the sense of not being alone. He ducked instinctively and held his breath. There was a rustle only his acute hearing could pick up, followed by another sound so surprising it almost knocked all the tenseness from his body. He contended against another feeling that had crept up at increasingly frequent intervals over the past few months: curiosity?

His resolve died as the small strange sound began again, lasting longer this time.

"Meeeerrowww."

• + • + • + • + •

He couldn't figure it out.

He asked himself as he cautiously looked up and beheld the sight. He asked himself as he stared for all of nine seconds. He asked himself as he shed the blanket and crept over to the edge of the balcony, leaning as far over the railing as he could with his flesh arm straining to reach the building ledge. And now that he was sitting back within the safety of the doorjam, he decided to ask someone else.

"How the hell did you manage to get yourself stuck seven flights up the side of the building?"

He looked straight into a pair of dark yellow eyes, belonging to the tiny ball of scruffy fur he held with firm gentleness in his two hands. Those eyes stared right back.

"Meeerw."

Not only could he not figure it out, he also could hardly believe that he now found himself holding a small, defenseless, and evidently stupid kitten. Which he had saved from a terrible imminent death. Figuring out _why_ was next on the agenda.

But first, it seemed logical that now that he had rescued it, he ought to check for any other signs of life-threatening distress. He felt for any broken or shifted bones and found none. When he listened for any labored breathing, he was rewarded with sounds of normal respiration and a tiny yank as little claws swiped to grab a wayward strand of his hair.

Satisfied with its apparent distress-free physical condition, he set the creature down on his lap, unsure of what to do next. He mechanically rubbed two fingers through the patchwork of white, red, and brown. A warm and slightly sharp sensation was blooming slowly in his chest. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but it confused him, and he wondered vaguely about it until a new chorus of mewing began to ascend from the tiny head looking up at him, each cry longer and more plaintive than the last.

A small surge of panic rose: an inexplicable urge to protect, to keep alive. Wordlessly, he scooped the kitten into the blanket and hurried inside. Shutting the door, he flipped on the overhead light, and set the bundle down on the floor. He pulled a small carton of milk from the fridge and grabbed a bowl off the counter.

 _Go on, Steve. You have it. C'mon, I don't need it. You do. You eat it._

He swallowed as the shadowy memory shifted in his mind like dust in a light breeze, rising and settling again.

He poured a bowlful of milk and set it down on the floor, not taking his eyes away until the kitten had licked up every drop. A strange feeling of relief coursed through him, and he was suddenly newly reminded of his sleep-deprived state. He collapsed bonelessly onto the lumpy couch in front of the kitchenette. If only he could catch two minutes of sleep before his subconscious realized it... the risk would be worth it... would it? He would have braced himself if he had the strength.

He could barely react to the soft _thud_ and unexpected weight on his chest with more than a low hum under his breath. The momentarily forgotten kitten seemed to be catching onto the idea that, yes, in fact, all normal domestic creatures ought to be asleep at this time of night. It pounced between the fingers of both his hands for a few minutes before settling against his side. And then, it began to purr. That odd, warm, sharp feeling creeped up again, and spread through him, and the corners of his mouth twitched upward. He gently nestled the sleeping form into the crook of his arm and stroked its tiny head. He felt within his core as if a large knot had loosened itself and he let his breathing slow to match up to that of the little intruder. His eyes drifted shut. It was darkness. Just warm, quiet darkness.

• + • + • + • + •

He knew what the knock meant. He had expected it, and if it hadn't eventually come, he would have ventured out to deliver some knocks of his own. If only there had been more time to prepare for it.

The knock meant having to open the door. And face whomever had made that knock.

Normally, he allowed himself at least a day to collect his scattered and less than diminished inventory of emotional stamina and social skill. Now in anticipation he had been allowed to do little more than bask in the brief glory of the aftermath of his dreamless if brief five hours of sleep, grin down at the small figure blinking sleepily at him, and pull on some presentable excuse for an outfit while listening to the kitten squeak out a tiny, droning appeal for breakfast. Last night he'd vaguely acknowledged the fact, but the reality of the actual possibility that he would have to face someone, much less explain how he happened to have the lost cat in his possession, had hit him with full force only moments ago, and now he was fighting off a fit of trembling, crouching on the floor next to the kitten as it downed another bowl of milk.

The knock also meant something else. When this something met with the warm, sharp feeling that still lingered, it hurt. He didn't understand it, and it hurt all the more.

Loss. He was going to lose something.

He drew an unsteady breath and paced slowly to his front door and opened it.

 _Female, early thirties, local, no weapons except set of keys, minimal threat... STOP IT STOP IT, BARNES._

and

 _Female, approximately ten years old-_

"Hi! I'm sorry to bother you, but I live across the hall. I'm looking for a kitten. I think she wandered out and I wasn't looking, and I'm just so worried and I don't know what to do but ask everyone."

He forced his gaze to meet the woman's and haltingly dredged up an unpracticed response to her hurried Romanian. "Um, hi. Y-yeah I found your cat. I-in here..." He opened the door wider to let them in.

"Stela!" The little girl gasped, and rushed to pick up the kitten, lavishing it with relieved exclamations.

The woman thanked him, and tried to press a small wad of bills into his hand. He pushed it back with a shake of his head as he looked at the kitten in the happy little girl's arms.

It had needed him and now it was gone. But it had been dear to him. And it was still dear to him. That was what the warm, sharp feeling had been: he had cared for the kitten, he more than cared for it, and now that it was gone, it hurt. And he didn't know why. Loss wasn't something new. Loss couldn't be more familiar. Nothing was more normal than having something only to have it taken away again. What was so different?

Maybe it was that he had learned again to care and love. He had dared to practice them. He had been presented with the need for these actions and had carried them out without questioning whether or not he even had a choice to do it. He had just assumed he was allowed to do what he wanted, what he felt was right. He had found his own free will.

It still hurt. But he also felt a tiny sliver of hope.

 _Edit: Title is part of a quote from Og Mandino_


End file.
